BP, Halliburton, warned their Gulf well was unstable, failed to act

Investigators with the president’s oil spill commission have found that tests performed before the deadly blowout of a BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico should have raised doubts about the cement used to seal the well. But the company and its cementing contractor failed to act on the information.

The finding from the panel’s staff appears to conflict with statements made by Halliburton Co., which has said tests showed the cement mix was stable. The cement’s failure to prevent oil and gas from entering the well has been identified as one of the causes of the accident.

The panel says only one test of four by Halliburton on the cement’s stability showed that it would hold. But the single successful test was not shared with BP, and may not have been known by Halliburton, before the cement was pumped.

From the New York Times

The result of at least one of those tests was given on March 8 to BP, which failed to act upon it, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., said in a letter delivered to the commissioners on Thursday.

Another Halliburton cement test, carried out about a week before the blowout of the well on April 20, also found the mixture to be unstable, yet those findings were never sent to BP, Mr. Bartlit found.

Although Mr. Bartlit does not specifically identify the cement failure as the sole or even primary cause of the blowout, he makes clear in his letter that if the cement had done its job and kept the highly pressured oil and gas out of the well bore, there would not have been an accident.